|
The Life in Us Is Eternal
By Warren
Litzman
These days the secular networks, radio stations, and print magazines, have put
forth a special effort to make clear their various viewpoints concerning Jesus
Christ, His death and His resurrection. They have especially concentrated on
Christ’s resurrection. They seem to be perplexed as to whether Christ actually
arose from the grave, and if so where is He now and if not, where is His body.
It is very difficult to understand godly things if you don’t believe the Bible.
To not believe in Christ’s resurrection is to leave a huge hole in our concept
of life after death.
There is no way we can actually talk about getting out of the grave except by
looking at Jesus who is our bona fide example.
The Bible Record
In the historical record, three people were raised from the dead in the Lord’s
ministry. In the early New Testament Church period, we have five people raised
from the dead. We would be safe in saying that four of these people had not been
dead very long when they were raised from the dead. They were not buried. The
only way we can really know and understand resurrection is to look at Jesus.
“Raising the dead” is a common term used at least twice in the Christian
commission.
All Things Proven by
Resurrection
How did Jesus come out of the grave, technically speaking? As Luke says all
things are proven by the resurrection, then we must assume the Holy Spirit who
gave Luke that thought is able to say that all things hinge on the Resurrection
one way or another. If everything that has to do with God’s plan hinges on the
Resurrection, then we would have to say that everything in God’s plan is a part
of the Resurrection. For instance, the Holy Trinity is an intricate part of the
Resurrection. Jesus is raised from the dead by God the Father. "And what is
the exceeding greatest of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the
working of His mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from
the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places" (Eph.
1:19-20). Here we have God the Father raising Jesus from the dead.
God Must Raise Jesus
from the Dead
The
writings of the Holy Spirit to Paul, the Apostle to the Church at Ephesus,
declare that Jesus is raised from the dead by the Father. Everything in the plan
of God must hinge on this. God must raise Jesus from the dead. God made Jesus
the Lamb before the foundation of the world was laid. Jesus was predestined to
be the Lamb. All throughout history, from the slaying of the innocent substitute
to save Adam and Eve from their sin right down to Calvary, everything God did
had to do with the Lamb. The millions of animal sacrifices made by Israel all
point to the Lamb of God. God never did anything aside from lambship. He set
aside His only begotten Son, Jesus, from the foundation of the earth to be the
Lamb of God for sinners slain. He never dealt with any Old Testament people
aside from that. The shadow of an innocent substitute was always present. God
was never without lambship. If such is the case—if God saw to it by everything
in history being dovetailed to the Lamb of God for sinners slain—then it is
equally right to assume that God would save His Son by the same power. If He so
predestined Him to be killed, He would so predestine Him to be resurrected. So
the Father has equally added resurrection to the plan of God. Jesus is raised
from the grave by the Father.
The Second Authority
We read in John 10:18, "No man taketh it [my life] from me, but I lay
it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it
again. This commandment have I received of my Father." This is the second
authority by which Jesus is raised from the dead—the authority of the Son. In
one place the Father raises Him from the dead, and then in another place Jesus
has the power to take up His life again. This appears conflicting, does it not?
You have to understand the Kenosis of Jesus to understand what happened to Him.
If I read this verse and did not know He died and rose from the grave, I would
say no harm could ever come to Him as He has ultimate power. He can do anything.
He can take His life and lay it out—be dead one day and alive the next—so
nothing of any consequence will ever happen to Him. The fact is, however, that
He relieved Himself of the power to handle His own life. This is what we call
the Kenosis of Jesus. This is His self-limiting power. Even though He had the
power to destroy Himself, and then bring Himself back, He laid it aside. But we
see that Jesus had the power of resurrection—"No man taketh my life from me."
1 Corinthians 15:4-7 says, "And that he was buried, and that he rose again
the third day according to the scriptures: And he was seen of Cephas, then of
the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of
whom the greater part remain until this present, but some are fallen asleep.
After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles." Jesus possessed
the power to come forth, to raise Himself up on the third day. This is not
conflicting. Jesus made a statement in another place that "my Father worketh
hitherto and I work." If His meat was to do the will of the Father, and if
He said He had no life aside from the Father, then we must assume a perfect
harmony existed between the Son and the Father. On the surface it is not
conflicting that the Father raises Him from the dead and that He also has the
power to raise Himself from the dead.
The Grace of Kenosis
However, we want to keep one little word in mind here. This is the all-important
word in the Christ-life. Jesus had ultimate power that He never used. They could
never have killed Him if He hadn’t laid aside His glory. They could never have
nailed Him to a cross if He had not subjected Himself to the persecution. God
would never have had a Lamb, because the Lamb which is Christ, was all God too.
None of this could have happened except Jesus restrained Himself. To some
this is a difficult subject. Sometimes people get upset when I am teaching on
this subject of Kenosis because the vein of theology today is to get
everything you can out of God. The real fact is that the Bible believer truly
trained by the Spirit will on numerous occasions limit himself, even if he knows
he can get something good from God. By his training as God’s offspring his
knowledge will enable him to turn it down.
There is a good illustration of this concerning the prodigal son in Luke 15.
After his ordeal in the hogpen, he will not go back to his father and ask for
his inheritance again, even though, when he came back, the father said he would
give him things. The son said, No, I don’t need that. I don’t want that. I’m not
worthy to receive what you want to give me. That is Kenosis. That is
self-limiting. That is the way our Father likes it. Just because you say you can
get a lot of things from God does not mean a lot to God, because He would like
to have some sons to say, Father, I don’t need that. I’m already a bona fide
inheritor of yours and a joint-heir with Your Son.
Do not carry this so far that you no longer trust and believe God, or have any
faith in Him. A lot of people do that when they say, Well, I’ll limit myself all
the time, I just don’t believe I can do that or get that.
Be careful because it is not pleasing to our Father when you do not stand on His
promises. There are occasions where the Son will limit Himself, and this is the
Kenosis we enter into. Are you willing to be nothing that Jesus can be
everything? Sometime or another in your life God may limit you. If your
knowledge has grown, He may limit you. Even though Jesus had the power to take
up His life and to lay it down again, He forfeited that power.
The Work of the Holy
Spirit
There is a third truth given to us in Romans 8:11. Here we see another means by
which Jesus was raised from the dead. "But if the Spirit of him that raised
up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead
shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you."
Most Bible scholars will tell you that the Spirit mentioned in this verse is the
Holy Spirit. The term Spirit is used interchangeably by the translators,
and they have often confused it into meaning the Holy Spirit when sometimes the
word refers to the Spirit of Christ.
For instance, verse 9 of this chapter says:
"…if any man have not
the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."
Is that speaking of the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Christ? If you say that it
speaks only of the Holy Spirit, does that mean that if you do not have the Holy
Spirit, as in the Pentecostal experience, you do not have Christ and are not
His? If anyone says this they are totally wrong, because the Spirit mentioned
here is Christ. It definitely means what it says— "if any man have not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."
People do not always answer in the affirmative when they are asked, Do you
really have Jesus in you? They answer with another question: Don’t I have the
Holy Spirit? That is not what I am talking about.
Separating Christ and
the Holy Spirit
Modern churches do not draw any difference between the Spirit of Christ and the
person of the Holy Spirit. It is very important that earnest believers know the
difference between Christ being in us, and us being filled with the Holy Spirit.
For instance, the Holy Spirit does not give us life. As a true seeking believer
I have to know whether I get life from the Holy Spirit or from Jesus. The Holy
Spirit is in perfect agreement with the plan of God. But it is interesting to
note that when you study the Scriptures, and particularly Romans 8, you need to
go through the verses and see whether Paul is referring to the person of the
Holy Spirit or whether he is referring to believers having the Spirit of Christ.
You probably will not get a clean-cut answer, but it is a stimulating study
because there has to be a difference in your understanding if you are ever going
deeper into the knowledge of Christ as your life.
The Holy Spirit Is
Not Jesus
What is the Spirit of Christ? Paul says it is Christ in us. That is what makes
us all members of God’s holy family. The Holy Spirit is not Jesus, and Jesus is
not the Holy Spirit. Why do we believe in a Trinity? It is a term that confuses
so many people. The Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit. In the matter of the Resurrection, there are scriptures where all three
of these are active. For instance, when God does something He very often
manifests Himself through these three different persons. He may do one thing in
three different manifestations of Himself, and that is why we say God is
manifested in three personalities—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit. None of them are the same as the other. God is the Son, the Son is God.
God is the Holy Ghost. God is the Father. The Father is not the Holy Ghost. The
Holy Ghost is not the Son. The Son is not the Father. They are only connected by
God. God is the Father, God is the Son, God is the Holy Ghost, but the Father is
not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Ghost, and Holy Ghost is not the Father.
Often the Son Limits
Himself
When it comes to the issue of the Resurrection, the Scriptures tell us that all
three members of the Godhead had to do with the Resurrection. It is interesting
to note that the part of the Resurrection alive and active is the part where God
was. God raised Jesus from the dead. The Son said, I could do it. I have the
power to lay My life down and take it up again. Obviously, He limited Himself.
"If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His." But "if the
same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwelleth within us it shall quicken
our mortal bodies" because that Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. So God
raised up His Son by the method of the Spirit within. What was that Spirit?
That’s simple, that Spirit was God. God in Him. So the issue is never that the
three persons of the Godhead strive to use their power, or that one sets aside
the other to do their own thing. They are in perfect unity. There is a perfect
blending together of God working through these three distinct persons. That’s
how Jesus got out of the grave. Resident in Him was the power over death. What
an interesting theological thought—He had within Himself the power to come forth
from the dead, but He also limited Himself to be able to die. Most people have
looked very little into the death of Jesus.
Kenosis
We don’t understand the business of life and death. God always brings life out
of death. Hope out of despair. Peace out of strife. That is the way He does
things. He brings everything out of nothing. It’s hard for us to understand
resurrection other than to say God raised Jesus from the dead, but the Scripture
said He had the Spirit in Him that could not be killed. The reason why most of
us will not die to the flesh is because we do not understand dying and death. We
have it so closely equated with natural dying and death that we just think it’s
too painful and something God does not want us to do. The moment Jesus’ dead
head fell on His dead shoulders, death in the natural was over. He had borne my
sin and the end of sin is death. He had died and that was an end to my
self-life. He had lain aside by Kenosis the Spirit that would bring Him back
from the dead, so that He could physically die the moment He had borne my sin.
Isaiah’s prophecy said that He bore in His own body our sin, so the ultimate of
God was that God put my sin into Christ’s body and He did this by the cup Jesus
drank in Gethsemene. That is why he died quickly on Calvary. The moment it was
done technically sin was abolished and death was conquered, so when they laid
Him in a tomb there was still resident within Him the seeds of eternal life. All
He needed to do was to release that power and thus that conforms to what He said
in John 10: "I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again."
He did not get rid of resurrection life, He merely set it aside. That is what
the word Kenosis means—self-restraint.
That Same Spirit Is in Us
Jesus limited Himself from the power to take up His life to bear my sin. But
once sin was in His body and He had borne my sin, and the blood was released
sufficiently to cover my sins, the sacrifice had been made and He had the power
to take up His life again. This is to show us how the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost were active in the resurrection of Jesus. If that same Spirit dwells
within me I cannot be destroyed. Yet I will die. There is no relationship
between spiritual death and physical death. If the same Spirit that raised Jesus
from the dead dwelleth within me, it shall quicken my mortal body and I’ll never
be destroyed, but I will die. It is appointed unto every man once to die. But
just as Jesus by Kenosis laid aside the power so that my death and my sin could
be put into His body and He could die with ending its force and effect, so will
I die one of these days. But you cannot destroy me because I have the same
Spirit in me that raised Jesus from the dead and it shall quicken my mortal
body. The Bible teaches us seven ways that God heals. One of those ways is in
this verse of scripture. The Christ-spirit dwells within us and it shall quicken
our mortal bodies. We know that the primary need of that is the Resurrection
morning, but there is also a stimulating application for us right now. I know
that dwelling within me right now is enough quickening power by the Holy Spirit
to bring me back from the dead. By grace I see God allowing some of that some of
the time to quicken our mortal bodies right now. We could not make it in the
work of God if we did not have the assurance that the Spirit of the Lord within
would quicken our mortal bodies and keep us going regardless. What would make an
old saint in the Lord say, I know I’m going to come out of the grave, I know I’m
going to rise up and meet the Lord.
How could he say that with assurance, and spit in the devil’s eye when he said
it? It is because he had felt that quickening power of the Spirit. We have
eternal life dwelling in us right now and every once in a while God quickens
this mortal body with a little touch of eternal life. If God were to quicken us
entirely we would be in our resurrection bodies. Jesus did not allow them to
touch Him that first time because that resident power within Him that quickens
the body was so powerful. He had to return to the Father, where the Father was
able to temper the eternal life in the Son to such a point that He could appear
before men again as a man. What an awesome story!
|
